I've Taught Meditation for 21 Years

The Truth About What It Actually Is

By Maria | Practice with Maria

"I've tried meditation. It's just not for me."

I hear this more than almost anything else. Usually before someone has even sat down. Sometimes from people who have been coming to Yoga and Pilates classes for years — intelligent, self-aware, genuinely curious people — who have quietly decided that meditation is a practice they simply cannot do.

And every single time, when I ask what happened, the answer is some version of the same thing.

"I couldn't empty my mind", “I am failing”, “I am not good at it”.

So let me say this clearly, at the very beginning of this article: if that's why you stopped, you didn't fail at meditation. You just have wrong information about what it is.

The Biggest Misconception: Emptying Your Mind

Meditation is not about emptying your mind. It never was.

Your mind thinks. That’s its job — constantly, automatically, relentlessly. Trying to empty your mind in meditation is like trying to stop your heart from beating. The intention was never to silence the noise. The intention is to notice it.

Here is what meditation actually is: you place your attention somewhere — your breath, a sound, a sensation, a word — and when your mind wanders (and it will, within seconds, and that is completely normal), you notice that it has wandered, and you gently bring it back.

That moment of noticing, that small act of returning, that is the practice.

Not the silence. Not the stillness. The return.

In 21 years of teaching, I have watched this realization land in people like a door opening. Students who had been gripping through every session, furious at themselves for thinking about their shopping list. People who had tried various apps and concluded that meditation doesn’t work for them. The moment they understood that the wandering mind isn't the obstacle — it's the opportunity — everything changed.

Your thoughts are not your enemy. They are simply weather. You don't have to stop the rain. You just learn not to stand in it without a coat.

Other Things That Are Keeping You Away

Once the mind-emptying myth is cleared, other objections tend to surface. I've heard them all. Here are the most common ones.

"I can't sit like a Buddha."

Good, because you don't need to. The lotus position is a cultural and aesthetic tradition, not a requirement for meditation. What matters is that your spine is reasonably upright — because slouching creates physical discomfort that distracts the mind — and that you are stable enough to stay relatively still.

Sit on a chair with your feet flat on the floor. Sit against a wall with your legs stretched out. Lie down if that's what your body needs, though know that lying down makes it easier to fall asleep, which is a different kind of rest entirely. Your position is a tool, not a test.

I've taught meditation to former athletes with knee injuries who couldn't cross their legs, to pregnant women, to people in their seventies who needed three cushions to sit comfortably. We just made the appropriate adjustments for each one and every single one of them meditated.

"I don't have time."

Five minutes is enough to begin. I mean this seriously — not as encouragement, but as fact. Five minutes of intentional, focused breath awareness changes your nervous system in measurable ways. The idea that meditation requires a dedicated hour, a silent room, and a specific time of day is one of the most effective barriers we've collectively built around a practice that is actually extraordinarily simple.

The question is not whether you have time. The question is whether you're willing to treat five minutes of your day as non-negotiable.

That willingness is where practice begins.

"I'm not doing it right. I'm not succeeding."

There is no success or failure in meditation. There is only showing up and there is not showing up.

The session where your mind ran wild for fifteen minutes and you spent the whole time distracted and restless? That was still meditation. The session where you felt calm and present and something shifted? Also, meditation. They are not different in value, they are just different in experience.

Some of my most profound moments in practice have come after sessions I would have described, in the moment, as complete failures. The practice works beneath the surface of what you can observe. Trust the process.

Why Guided Meditation Works — Especially at the Beginning

One of the most useful things I tell new students is this: you don't have to sit in silence and figure it out alone. Guided meditation exists precisely because the unguided mind — especially a mind that is anxious, tired, or new to practice — needs something to follow.

A guide gives your attention a track to follow. Instead of negotiating with a blank internal space, you're listening, following, being led through breath and body and awareness. This is a completely legitimate and deeply effective form of practice — one that many experienced meditators return to throughout their lives, not because they can't manage alone, but because being guided offers something different. A different quality of surrender. A different kind of rest.

This is exactly why I started creating guided meditations on my YouTube channel. I wanted to build a free, accessible library that people could return to — whether they are in their first week of practice or their tenth year. Something to come back to on the hard days. Something to start with when silence feels too loud.

If you've never tried a guided meditation, or if your previous attempts at silent practice felt impossible, I'd encourage you to start there. Give your mind something to follow. Let someone else hold the structure while you simply breathe.

Building a Practice at Home

Classes are where many people discover meditation. But the real transformation — the slow, accumulating change in how you relate to your mind, your stress, your body — happens at home, in the ordinary moments, when no one is watching and there is no class to show up to.

A home practice doesn't have to be elaborate. It doesn't require incense or a meditation cushion or a special corner of your apartment. It requires consistency and almost nothing else.

Five minutes every morning is more valuable than one hour once a week. Not because duration doesn't matter — it does, eventually — but because regularity is what trains the nervous system. You are building a habit of return. Every time you sit down, even briefly, you are reinforcing the neural pathway that says: this is what we do now.

Start with guided meditations on YouTube — mine or anyone else's whose voice and approach resonates with you. Use them as foundation. Over time, as the practice becomes more familiar, you may find you want more silence, more space, less guidance. Or you may not, and that is equally fine.

The point is not to arrive at some pure, unguided, perfectly silent practice. The point is to practice. Regularly, imperfectly, and with the understanding that every return — however small — counts.

What 21 Years Has Actually Taught Me

I came to meditation through movement — through gymnastics, through yoga, through years of working with the body before I truly understood the mind. And what practice has taught me, more than any training or any book, is this:

Meditation is not a performance. It is not something you get good at in a way that other people can see. It is something that changes you quietly, gradually, in ways you often only notice in retrospect — when you realize you responded to something differently, when you notice you're not as reactive as you used to be, when a challenge arrives and somewhere inside you there is more space than there used to be.

That space is built breath by breath. Session by session. Return by return.

You are not bad at meditation. You just haven't been told the truth about what it is yet.

Now you have.

Ready to start? Visit my YouTube channel for free guided meditations for all levels — from complete beginners to experienced practitioners. New meditations added regularly.

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